Tadpole Costume for Crawling Baby
(Pair
it with the
Frog costume
for older sibling!)
Supplies:
Green fleece 18 x 40 inches
Sheer green fabric of choice
Batting
Scraps of white and blue fleece for eyes (or other desired
colors)
Green footie pajamas or a shirt & shorts/pants to wear
underneath
Big scrap of paper for pattern
Directions:
Sewing-wise, this is a
very simple costume to make! The only thing that will
take much time is tweaking the pattern, but no worries
b/c I've already done that for you. Draw out this basic
shape on a big scrap (We have a roll of paper for my
son's art easle so I just used a strip of that. It may
be easier with a strip of the cheapest white fabric you
can buy or if you just have spare fabric lying around
you could use that. You'll be holding it up to your baby
though to check for size, and that's a tad trickier with
the paper since it rips.). Just to give you an idea, the
tail portion is about 24 inches long and the circular
front part is about 17 inches long.
Before we go any
further, let me make sure you understand what you're
looking at. We're used to seams being along our sides,
but this costume just has a seam down the center back
and center front, so what you're looking at is the
pattern piece for one entire side of the body. You'll
notice that I roughly drew around the edges in blue and
orange. The blue areas are edges that will be sewn. The
orange areas are those that will be left open. From left
to right the orange/open edges are the legs hole (this
is where the baby's whole hips will stick through and
his legs will hang out loose), the shoulders hole (this
is where the baby's whole chest will stick through and
both arms will hang out loose), and the head hole (yep-
for the head). Between the shoulder and leg hole is a
stomach seam that is closed over the baby's stomach and
that's what more or less keeps the costume in place.
Label your pattern piece, color coated as shown.
Now that we have that
clear, you'll need to take your pattern piece and hold
it up to your baby to check for size. Remember that this
is a SIDE half of the costume, so it goes from the
center of the chest to the center of the back. Double
check that the orange "legs hole" is large enough to go
around Baby's hips, and that the shoulder hole and head
hole seems to be in about the right place. Adjust
pattern as necessary. Just do your best, you can tweak
it later.
Use the pattern piece
to cut out two pieces of fleece.
Cut out some batting,
like this.
Using a long strip of
the sheer green fabric for the fin, fold it in half, and
lay it inside between the two layers of green, keeping
all raw edges together. The folded side of the fin is
towards the center and the raw edges are at the edge
where you're about to sew. Get the fin fabric in place
along the entire tail portion. Pin all the layers in
place. This includes in order: batting, dark green, fin
green, then dark green again. I used two colors of pins,
putting red pins along the edges that I should STOP
sewing because they'll be left open, and putting yellow
pins along the edges that need sewed. For this, refer to
the color coated pattern piece you already made.
Sew the edges marked by
yellow pins (which were the edges marked in blue on the
pattern piece) except for the shoulder seam.
Flip the fabric
right-side-out, and it should look like the photo below.
Cut a piece of green
fleece 5" wide by 4" tall to insert to the chest area.
Center the bottom (a 5" side) of the rectangle over the
seam line where the "stomach seam" meets the "shoulder
hole". Sew that 5" side in place.
Now sew the upper left couple inches of the rectangle to the
left "shoulder seam." Instead of sewing the same seam on the
right side, you'll be putting a velcro square on instead, so
that Baby can get his head through the neck hole with no
problems. So, sew a generously sized velcro square on the
upper right corner of the rectangle, and sew another velcro
square on the right "shoulder seam." (If you look closely
you'll see an "X" sewn on right there).
The first photo is labeling each seam according to what I
labeled it on the paper pattern (the blue and orange writing
on the pattern piece at the beginning of this tutorial), the
second photo just shows what it looks like.
That completes the body
portion of the tadpole. Click HERE for a tutorial to make
the hat. But rather than making eyes that pop out the top,
just leave the hat "plain" and then go back and sew on
little raised eyes using a circle of fabric with a little
cotton ball underneath for stuffing.
There's your squirmy
little tadpole! (*Note that this photo was taken BEFORE
I sewed the 5"x4" rectangle over the chest, so in this
photo the chest is open. Hopefully we'll get an updated
photo over Halloween!)
Now just pair with
an older sibling as a frog
and you're
ready to get hoppin'!
Last, if you decided to
do this project yourself, please send me a photo of it
with your name and what state you're from! I've recently
decided to start featuring my readers' finished
results.
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